"the wife" here
I love shooting my .45 Jericho Baby Eagle. I'm looking into doing Black Badge at the end of January - so I'm considering the same gun in 9mm. I think in trying to learn a new skill (Black badge, IPSC, etc.) it'll be more beneficial to use a gun I'm very familiar with.
Perhaps the BB course will help me iron out some kinks, but I'm not opposed to having someone correct what I do wrong. I've never had that experience.
I do get frustrated, but I love my guns
Hello!
I'm not surprised you'd have a .45. Of the last 7 women I've worked with in the past few months, 5 of them liked the bigger guns. lol!
The problem with a big gun is some people can develop big flinches, and I suspect that could be what has happened to you. Trying to do this online is tough, so I still strongly recommend you seek out qualified local help. You may find that at or through the BB course. As mentioned, it's really a safety course, but when I took it, we all started with the guys checking our grips. Be sure to ask lots of questions at the course! That includes who you can see for instruction.
What I do to correct flinches will vary with the student, but a couple important things are:
- Make sure you can dry fire, while keeping the front sight post rock solid
- doing the dummy round drill. Mix live and dummy rounds in a mag and shoot. When a live round is hit, it'll go BANG. When the dummy is hit, it'll go "click". With the dummy, did the FSP move at all? Was it rock solid? Most likely, it moved. If the student wasn't sure, then they weren't looking at the FSP in the first place.
- if the FSP moved on a dummy round, keep dry firing on it until it's solid again, then eject it.
- if the live round went way off target, take a mental break and go through all the fundamentals I mention (in person), and try again.
The purpose of the mental break, and repeating the dryfire on a dummy, etc, is to help reinforce good behaviour and reprogram your brain. More and more range time with more complicated exercises like shooting on the move, will just confuse the issue. You want to reinforce good shooting, and each time you mess up, pause, refocus, and make the next shot go where you want. Over time the flinches will happen less and less often. When they do happen, they won't be as far off target.
There are other things/methods that I do, but this is really best done in person. Who you see at your local range will have their methods too. Just remember that the phrase "Practice makes perfect", is wrong. It's really "Perfect practice makes perfect". See the difference?
You want to practice the right things, and reinforce that behaviour. That's how I teach, anyhow.
